Calculating NDVI Maps from Sentinel-2 Data with MATLAB

During our current summer school on Earth Surface Dynamics 2018 we learned how to calculate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Sentinel-2 images. Here is a simple MATLAB script to import Sentinel-2 images and to calculate the NDVI.

Sentinel-2 is a system of four satellites built to perform terrestrial observations including forest monitoring, mapping land surface changes and natural desasters. The data can be downloaded free of charge at the USGS EarthExplorer after creating a user account. We use to images, acquired on 22 and 29 May 2018, from which we load the 650 nm (B04) and 850 nm (B08) spectral bands required to calculate the NDVI.

About me

I am a geoscientist, apl. professor of paleoclimate dynamics at the University of Potsdam. I have been using MATLAB since late 1992, especially for the analysis of paleoclimatic series. Please visit my university webpage http://martinhtrauth.de